


Follow Me

by Zabeta



Series: Follow Me [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, American Gothic (the literary genre), American Revolution, Colonial-era Road Trip, Complete, Ending equivalent to TFA's, Gen, Ghosts, Meetings in the Woods, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Statera Trium 'verse, Unreformed Kylo Ren, other supernatural entities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-10-05 00:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20479667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zabeta/pseuds/Zabeta
Summary: It was as if something inside her was suddenly awake after a long slumber. Self-doubt had troubled her since she arrived in the city, but it fell away like a discarded shell, and underneath there was nothing but courage and clarity. She knew that she could find Luke Skywalker just as she knew she could catch a rabbit or speak Shawnee. Rey felt tears of relief well up in her own eyes at the familiarity of it, as if it had been an effort not to feel this strength before.“I accept, Mrs. Solo. What else do I need to know?”Welcomed into Leia Organa Solo's Philadelphia household in the spring of 1777, Rey has just learned what it is to live among people who love her when Mrs. Solo makes an unexpected request. Her journey into the Pennsylvania wilderness reveals the truth about her past and brings her face-to-face with characters from her dreams and nightmares.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Statera Trium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366297) by [flypaper_brain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flypaper_brain/pseuds/flypaper_brain), [leoba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoba/pseuds/leoba), [LoveThemFiercely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveThemFiercely/pseuds/LoveThemFiercely). 

> With the prompt to do something Gothic, I started thinking about haunted country houses a la my best beloved _Jane Eyre_, but my eyes caught a line about how the form was adapted in American literature and the importance of the wilderness in those stories. There were other lines further down in the same article about Edgar Allen Poe's romanticism, and it made me think of our favorite black-clad, morose (anti?)hero...and meetings in darkened woods...and this story began to bubble up.
> 
> This story might not exist at all, and certainly not in this form, without the inspiration and permission of the authors of [Statera Trium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366297/chapters/35656308) and [Cephalopods & Caffeine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15970064/chapters/37249886). If you like what you read below, and you haven't checked those out yet, do yourself a favor and click the links!
> 
> Specific thanks to [QueenOfCarrotFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers) and [MissCoppelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCoppelia/pseuds/MissCoppelia) for reading early outlines, [Flypaper_Brain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flypaper_brain/pseuds/flypaper_brain) for unsurpassed beta reading and ongoing moral support, and the mods of the RFFA for making this whole thing happen in the first place.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did you see this gorgeous Moodboard by the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology mods?

King Street, Philadelphia

May 1759

Ben Solo never felt more alone than when he was surrounded by people, and the wharves were teeming with them on that bright May morning. The sailors demanded his attention first, their outlandish clothes telling the stories of their travels to China, the Indies, Africa. Next were the settlers; at least one shipload must have arrived that morning, judging by the exhausted faces, anxious eyes, and soiled clothes of the small knots of people working their way past him and into the City. There were a few families like his there, too. He recognized acquaintances of his parents’ gathered to wish their loved ones safe travels. 

He held himself as aloof and cool as he could manage, attempting to model the Roman stoicism his tutors recommended as the appropriate bearing for a young gentleman. He clenched his jaw to keep the tears back. The sob attempting to escape his throat had been a constant ache in the past week. He had known for a year that he would be leaving soon after his twelfth birthday, but he had not thought much about it until winter had begun to soften into spring. In February, his mother began to order new clothes for him. Then his father sought him out to attempt, in his gruff way, to share some paternal wisdom. 

Six weeks ago, his mother announced that Luke had sent for him, and they booked his passage. The servants packed his trunks, and that was when the urge to cry began to visit him all the time. It was not that he was suddenly unhappy; Ben hadn’t been truly happy for a year or more. He thought that what he felt might have been cowardice. His mother and father talked about the great adventure he would undertake, traveling alone to his Uncle’s academy to complete his education. Perhaps he was just afraid of the adventure.

He thought that the dark ghost that kept whispering in his ear might also have been at fault. Though the ghost claimed to be his friend, it said cruel things sometimes, telling Ben that his parents did not know how to raise him, or that they did not care enough to learn. But the ghost whispered sweet praise when Ben most needed it, when he was feeling invisible among the constant whirl in their busy household.

So as he walked in front of his family down the wharf, heading for the ship that would take him on his adventure, Ben held back the ache in his throat. He did not see the small girl standing in front of him until he nearly tripped over her. She was pointing up at him, wreathed in smiles.

He couldn’t decide whether to be offended by the rude little thing, who was after all only an infant.

He had just decided that ignoring her would be more dignified when he looked past the little girl to the bedraggled woman who held the other ends of her leading strings. The horror on the woman’s face made him look again at the girl, and he heard her lisp, “Mama, look! He has TWO angels!” as she gazed up at him in delight.

Ben froze, and the woman scooped up her daughter, curtsied quickly, and hurried past. No one else had ever seen his ghosts before, and even he had seen them less and less in the last year. He had begun to believe what the dark ghost told him, that they were a product of his childish imagination. He stared after the child, who waved at him over her mother’s shoulder. 

Standing between him and the rapidly retreating pair was a bright ghost, wearing the type of quilted shirt a knight might wear beneath chain mail. Her beautiful face was solemn and sad as she nodded him a silent greeting before turning to follow the girl.

A rush of anger, sorrow, and betrayal finally overwhelmed his efforts to hold his feelings down, and his expressive face crumpled just as his father caught up with him.

“Aw, Ben. You’ll be fine. Learn everything you can from Captain Dameron - he’s one of the best. Your mother tells me he’s got his son as midshipman on this voyage. Wait ‘till you feel that wind in your hair…”

  
  



	2. The Soldier's Tale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely cover art by the talented [LilibethSonar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilibethSonar/pseuds/LilibethSonar)

Market Street, Philadelphia

July 1777

It took all of Rey’s concentration to work her way through the mid-afternoon throngs on Market Street. She didn’t find the crowds as overwhelming as she had when she first arrived in the City a few months before, but she still found it hard to resist her curiosity when she heard a new language - there must have been half a dozen being spoken all around her that very minute - or saw some exotic trinket for sale. She hadn’t seen Finn in days, though, and she didn’t want to waste time she could be spending in his company.

She ducked out of the late July heat into a dim room that smelled of rum and beer and unwashed men. She had to let her eyes adjust for a minute before she could see her friend waiting in the far corner, a tankard already in front of him. She caught his eye and he called for a second cup as she wound her way past a long table full of soldiers.

She clasped Finn’s hand briefly as she took her seat beside him so that they could both see and hear the soldiers’ gossip. She had come for Finn’s company, but they both recognized an opportunity to gather intelligence when they saw one. He leaned closer and said, “I swear, Rey, those breeches are damn near indecent. Another month of Mrs. Kalonia’s cooking and you’re not going to be able to carry off this disguise anymore.” 

She elbowed him and worked hard not to smile. Finn could make her laugh like no one else, but they both knew that her laugh was the one thing she could never disguise. Pitching her voice low, dirtying her face, and donning a loose pair of breeches had allowed her to pass anywhere she needed to go so far, but the sweet peal of her laughter always made men look at her a little harder than was safe.

“I’ll stop eating before I give up breeches! The dresses back home were bad enough, but do you know what ladies here wear underneath?” Rey asked. “These things called stays, like cages they lace themselves into so their breasts go up to here,” she gestured with her palms high up on her chest, making Finn choke on his beer.

“Rey, stop! Yes, I know what stays are. You don’t need to…”

“What? Isn’t this what men talk about together?” she whispered, with her hands still cupped to her chest. Louder she added, “...like a pair of sweet round tea cakes, glazed with sugar! I tell you, I could have licked them!” Finn punched her in the leg, beneath the table, but relaxed when he saw that no one else had noticed her bawdy teasing.

“Finn, you welcomed me by commenting on the shape of my ass! What makes that fine language for you but too much for your young companion here?” she asked, pointing to herself.

Finn though for a minute. “I guess you’re right. It is easier for me to treat you like a boy than it is for me to hear you talk like one. I still don’t like to think you even know those words - and I never said ‘ass’!”

“Oh, Finn, for heaven’s sake! You saw where I grew up! I don’t think I remember meeting three people in all my life who realized I was female. Might as well have been raised by the bears and raccoons for all the manners I learned. Leather breeches suit me better than stays and skirts. I’ll be so happy to be home when this is all over. With you!” She nudged him with her shoulder, then stayed close, leaning in to him a little while she looked around the room.

Rey had teased Finn before about hauling him with her when she returned to the woods and hills where he’d found her. To be fair, since she knew where she was and he had been lost, it was more like she found him. But from the moment he had grasped her hand to allow her to pull him out of the creek bed where he had been hiding, she felt as if he were saving her. He seemed to carry good fortune with him; a lot of good fortune had been required to survive in the wilderness after he deserted his regiment near Lake Erie. 

Finn enjoyed the stillness for a minute, smiling down at Rey’s bright brown hair. He was just about to nudge her away again to a safer distance when she sat up, alert to the single voice that had risen above the general buzz of the soldiers.

All of the men there looked as though they’d been dragged backward through a hedge - clothes stained and patched, faces unshaven - but most of them looked content to be sitting inside with a drink in their hands. The speaker, though, looked hunted. His restless eyes stared out from dark hollows, and sallow skin dragged across his sharply angled cheek bones and sagged at his jaw. His voice rose and fell, but as the room stilled Rey and Finn could hear him clearly.

“He were as tall as his horse, standing, broad and black and terrible. We never saw his face - wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have one, just a dark pit beneath his hood. It were afternoon when they came upon us, but I swear to you, where he stood, the darkness was already falling.” The words sounded to Rey and Finn like a tall tale, but the man didn’t speak with the practiced cadence of a storyteller. His voice wavered and his hand shook as he spoke, and the men around him listened in silence even as he paused for a deep drink of his ale.

“You’ve never seen soldiers like his, more savage and strange than anything I ever saw in the last wars. Their skin was every color skin comes in, and at least one was painted blue. Black, every one of them wore black from head to toe, but one of them had a sash of skulls, and one had devilish symbols all over the skin of his face, permanent-like. Fiercest fighters I’ve ever seen fight hand-to-hand. They’d come up on us too fast and our guns were all but useless, except to bash and stab where we could.”

One man slipped a question in as the speaker took another drink. “Is it true they make no sound at all? Like smoke, I heard, they move as fast and quiet as smoke.”

“We never heard ‘em. We were walking through the woods, to be sure, making our own noise. But we didn’t hear a thing, even with that big bastard on his cursed horse riding down on us. They sure made noise fightin’, though. Sounds that curdled my blood.” His words trailed off as he stared off into the dark corners of the room. “Smoke, though. Smoke. It smelled like smoke.”

Someone in his audience settled a full tankard in front of him, and he remembered where he was. “Now, the worst of it I haven’t said yet. We were seasoned fighters to a man. Frightening as those devils were, weren’t one of us run away. But the big one in the hood, he sat his horse, high up above it all, and he raised his arm - I’m telling you true - raised his arm and a tree at our left flank fell and crushed four of us. He raised his arm again and a rock came up out of the earth and fell down again on three more. And while the living were frozen there, petrified, his soldiers hacked their way through all the rest of us.” 

“But smoke you say? Yes, I fell when one of ‘em knocked me hard on the head and dreamt of something like fire and smoke…” He stared into his mug, then, and no matter what questions his audience asked, they could get nothing more from him but the single word, smoke.

* * *

Finn and Rey agreed to return together to Alderaan House to share what they had heard with Mrs. Solo. They were quiet on the walk back up from the river, chilled by what they had heard. They came upon Poe Dameron a block from the house, and were still trying to convince him of the importance of their news as they went in through the back gate. 

“Of course it sounds like a tale, Poe, but you didn’t see the man. He didn’t even seem to want to be talking - his words came out like he had to speak. And his face, after he finished and everyone turned away - it was just so frightened and...”

“Haunted!” Rey supplied

“Yes, exactly. As if he were still haunted by it all,” Finn finished.

Poe shook his head, his expression making it clear what he thought of the story, but he knew 

Mrs. Solo well enough to take them to her so that she could hear from them herself.

Leia Organa Solo sat in her day room, writing a letter by the last of the late summer light. Her vision had been excellent for a woman her age until the last few months. The hours she spent writing every day and almost every evening had taken their toll. She wrote letters full of brilliance and fire in support of Independence, directing them - under pseudonyms - to newspapers around the colonies. Other letters she penned in her own name, relying on her charm, wit, and position to secure resources for the militia. The glasses she often wore perched on the end of her nose certainly helped, but she was vain and tended to whisk them off her face when she heard anyone approaching. Rey caught her tucking them into an embroidered pocket as she invited them in.

After Poe explained their errand, she gave them a gracious and patient smile along with her full attention, and invited them to explain. Finn had delivered intelligence briefings before and knew to begin with a summary so that Mrs. Solo could see where he was heading and marshall all of the relevant facts to mind as she listened. Finn had heard soldiers talking about the great General Washington and how he listened, and he thought that Mrs. Solo would have made a fine General herself.

When he described the strange, black clothes the irregulars wore, the lines between Mrs. Solo’s eyes deepened, but when he mentioned the smell of smoke her face went blank and Finn was no longer certain she was listening. She remained still, though, until he got to the part where the irregulars’ leader called down a tree with a gesture. Poe shook his head again in disbelief, but Mrs. Solo turned toward the window, away from them. Her hand went to the keys at her waist and she fiddled with them until Finn had itemized every detail that made them believe the soldier’s tale.

She kept her eyes on the dusk-covered garden as she asked, “Did you think he was telling the truth about the smell of smoke? Or was that an embellishment?” When they had both agreed it seemed genuine she invited them to call on her again after breakfast the next day, and they took their leave.

Leia stared into the garden long after they left, long past the moment when the light disappeared. If Poe heard her one-sided conversation as he locked up the house for the night, he never mentioned it to anyone. In truth, he had become accustomed to this habit of hers, talking things through out loud by herself in the hours after sunset. Poe thought that she might miss her husband and imagine him with her, for the sarcastic tones and sudden laughter she’d saved for Han Solo often filtered through the closed door.

Hearing Poe ascend the stairs, Leia lit a lamp, prepared a new quill, and wrote one final letter before retiring to her own bed for a few hours of sleep.

* * *

The breakfast each member of Mrs. Solo’s household enjoyed included more food than Rey had seen on a good day in her old life in the hills, but it hadn’t taken her long to learn how to put away a full plate. That morning Mrs. Kalonia had set out cornmeal mush, honey, dried berries, bread, cheese, and cider at the kitchen table, and Rey was licking her porridge bowl when Poe summoned her to join Mrs. Solo in her private chamber.

Rey followed him into the house, wondering at the unusual meeting place, and asked him, “Is Finn back from his errands?”

“She asked for you alone today. Not sure what you’ve done now,” he added with a smirk. She hadn’t thought that she might be in trouble, and she began to run through her work over the past few days to see what she was missing. She was still thinking when she came to Mrs. Solo’s room.

“Rey, dear. Please come in. Shut the door behind you, if you would.” Leia motioned to a window seat facing the chair where she was seated, and Rey sat at attention, back straight and fear in her eyes.

“I’m sorry!”

“Whatever for?”

“Poe said I must have done something, but I can’t think what! I’m so sorry.”

“Heaven help us, he must have been teasing you, or perhaps he’s jealous that I was not calling for him this morning. Don’t fret! That man is endless trouble when he’s bored.”

Mrs. Solo looked at her kindly, but was silent for a moment while she studied Rey. “I have a request to make of you, my dear. The story you heard yesterday, I believe it must have been very close to the truth. And it means that we are in much greater danger than anyone knows.”

When she did not continue right away, Rey responded with a polite, “Yes, ma’am?”

“I learned just yesterday that General Washington’s troops are heading south from New Hope, which is fortunate, but this is a danger beyond anything he will recognize. We need help of another kind entirely.”

Rey thought that Mrs. Solo was looking at her more intently than usual, almost expectantly, but Rey had no idea what kind of help she referred to. 

“Rey, I need you to find my brother.”

* * *

Rey knew who Mrs. Solo’s brother was, though she did not believe most of what she had heard about him. The younger patriots that gathered in Mrs. Solo’s household told stories about the mysterious Luke Skywalker, who left the colonies to start a school in England many years before. In the most lurid of the stories they told - always quickly hushed if Mrs. Kalonia or Mrs. Solo appeared - he was something like a magician or a holy man. In the few stories Rey believed, he simply sounded very clever. Some people thought that they might have been able to avoid the present war if he were still in Philadelphia, but no one ever said enough to explain why they thought so. 

The only thing that Rey knew for certain about Luke Skywalker was that no one had seen him on the west side of the Atlantic in thirty years.

“You wish for me to travel to England?” Rey asked, very confused. “Wouldn’t a letter…?”

Mrs. Solo interrupted, “No, no. He is no longer in England. He returned to the colonies several years ago and headed into the wilderness. Hoping to disappear, I suppose. But I have some recent information that may help us narrow the search. I want you to go to meet with General Washington’s staff. If they confirm my guess, they will be able to tell you how best to find him.”

“Mrs. Solo, I appreciate your confidence in my woodsmanship, but why wouldn’t you send Poe or Finn?”

“Rey, whatever allowed you to survive in the woods all of those years alone was not simply woodsmanship. Perhaps it was luck, or good instincts, or the Grace of God. No matter what we call it, I know you can succeed in this mission when no one else can. I have faith in you, Rey.” There were tears in Mrs. Solo’s eyes as she finished speaking. 

Her words had a powerful effect on Rey. It was as if something inside her was suddenly awake after a long slumber. She felt the doubt that had troubled her since Poe’s teasing fall away like a discarded shell, and underneath there was nothing but courage and clarity. She knew that she could find Luke Skywalker just as she knew she could catch a rabbit or speak Shawnee. Rey felt tears of relief well up in her own eyes at the familiarity of it, as if it had been an effort not to feel this strength before.

“I accept, Mrs. Solo. What else do I need to know?”

* * *

The next two days were full of preparation for the journey. Finn and Poe would accompany Rey at least as far as General Washington’s encampment. Depending on the news there, they would all continue together up the Schuykill before the men headed west to enlist more help from the patriot allies among the Scotch-Irish settlers in the Western mountains. If Mrs. Solo’s information was correct, Rey would make her way north and west, deep into a wooded plateau south of the Wyoming valley. They would be able to rely on Mrs. Solo’s network of patriots and supporters for food and shelter in many places, but they would also need to pack some food for themselves and their horses, bedding, and a few tools for hunting and cooking.

Rey was packing her own kit when Finn called up to her from the stable yard. “Rey! Poe has something to show you. Come down!” The excitement on his face made Rey smile in return, and she clattered down the back stairs to see what was causing it.

“What is it, Finn?”

“Can’t tell you. Come on!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the small paddock behind the stables.

Rey loved the stables’ quiet darkness. For some reason, she associated the smell of horses, hay, and manure with comfort, and she liked to visit the horses when she had a rare spare moment. But Finn pulled her past it to lean on the paddock fence. Poe came out to meet them.

“Have you been practicing your whistle, Rey?” Poe asked, his eyes sparkling.

“What? Who needs practice?“ She put two fingers in her mouth and blew a trill of two repeating notes, melodic and loud. In response, her favorite horse trotted out of the darkness of the stable and stopped in front of her. The chestnut and white pinto gelding nuzzled her and waited patiently to see if she had brought any treats. His freshly brushed coat gleamed in the sunlight.

Rey spoke gently to the horse, “Hello, my bonny boy. How are you today?” To Finn and Poe she added, “What do you want to show me?”

“Mrs. Solo asked me to pick out a horse for you. I thought you might like to take your bonny boy along for company.”

“Poe! I can’t. This horse is much too valuable! One of the mares will be perfect - or Falcon?”

“Mrs. Solo asked me to pick out a horse that was sure-footed, fast, had good wind, and wouldn’t shake your teeth out. The mares don’t answer that description, and Mrs. Solo has a sentimental attachment to Falcon and won’t let him out of her sight. You’re already friends with Balthazar. He’ll be perfect.”

“Wait. His name is Balthazar?”

“That’s the name Mrs. Solo gave him, I’m afraid,” Poe smiled. “I don’t imagine anyone would object if you were to re-christen him, as much time as you’ll be spending with him.”

“Then I’m going to keep calling him my Bonny Boy.”

* * *

They set out early on Monday, after a messenger arrived the night before to confirm that General Washington’s forces were camped at Wissahickon, on the plain above the Schuylkill Falls. Mrs. Solo came out to see them off, giving each of them a few last-minute words of advice and good wishes.

The General’s encampment was an impressive sight, with neat rows of white tents beside a large farmhouse that served as headquarters. The officers usually working inside were gathered around a table under an enormous oak tree, their wool coats abandoned in the summer heat. One of them read the letter of introduction they brought with them from Mrs. Solo, and waved them over.

“Good day to you! Join us. Boy,” he waved at Rey, “ask the Mistress of the house for another pitcher of her ale.”

Rey played her part, running errands as a boy of her pretended age would do without question.

Finn and Poe were already interviewing the officers when she returned with a full pitcher of something that smelled delicious, yeasty and malty, with the tang of good hops. Knowing how the table full of men would be likely to attack it, she had already sucked a long swallow from the pitcher before walking out the kitchen door.

Sure enough, an officer filled Poe’s and Finn’s tankards, then passed the pitcher around the table before handing it back to her. She sat beside Finn while he poured her the dregs and motioned to her to wipe the smudge of foam from her mouth.

What they learned quickly confirmed Mrs. Solo’s intelligence, and one of the men pulled a sheet of paper towards him and began to draw a map. He explained as he drew two long straight lines of ridge, two rivers crossing them and one long winding one behind them, then added jagged lines signifying mountains and marked the towns and farms where she would be most likely to find help, and pushed it over to Poe. There was no reason to tell the officers that this would be her map, so Poe folded it into his pocketbook with only a glance her way.

The officer next to Poe had been watching the mapmaker, and asked, “Isn’t that where those stories are coming from?”

“For God’s sake, Meade! Ghost stories meant to scare children don’t bear repeating among men,” the mapmaker chided.

“Anyway, it was further north,” another officer corrected. “And we’ve heard enough of ‘em, Fitz; one begins to think there’s some truth to them.”

Poe gave Finn and Rey a warning glance and asked the question he knew they were thinking. “What kind of stories? Give us a new tale to carry west with us.”

“Really nothing. The usual backwoods bosh.” The officer tried to brush off Poe’s question, but one look at the trio’s faces told him he wasn’t going to get off so easily. “They all describe irregular forces. But the descriptions are so outlandish - hardly credible! All clothed in black, with a monstrous officer on an all-black horse, breathing fire and smoke, some say! Really, the rest doesn’t bear repeating.” The officer shuddered, and swallowed some ale, and Rey saw a look in his eyes that made her wonder what exactly he was refusing to repeat.

* * *

They traveled the rest of the day and made camp for the night at a spot above the river, far enough away to avoid the mosquitoes, but close enough to catch the breath of cooler air that came off the river as the sun set. Poe hadn’t talked much since they left the encampment, which was unusual, but Rey didn’t mind the chance to talk to Finn. Even as she felt the relief of being outside the clamor of the City, thinking about not seeing him for several weeks or even months was painful. When Poe volunteered to walk back to the river to catch something for their supper, Rey asked Finn if he knew what was troubling their friend.

“He worries about you, Rey. He doesn’t like the idea of you going alone and doesn’t understand why Mrs. Solo would send you instead of him.”

“Do you worry, Finn?”

“Of course I do! But Mrs. Solo wouldn’t send you without a reason. And I know how strong you are. Poe sees a young woman and expects weakness, but I know you. I know your heart, Rey.” He looked into her face and his voice softened. “Do you worry?”

“Finn, I’m terrified! But there is something else there, too. If I think about it, my head tells me that I can’t do this. I am not the strongest person Mrs. Solo could have chosen, nor the most experienced. But my heart is telling me that Mrs. Solo is right.” The last phrase was whispered, as if she was afraid to say the words out loud.

“Rey, since you took this mission, you have… I don’t know. I want to say you have grown. You look taller.” Finn reached out and tilted her face up so that she could see the pride there. “Your face shines with a light that wasn’t there last week.”

Rey leaned over to hug him, and he continued, “I wish I could go with you, but not because I am worried for you. Just because things are always easier with you near me.”

The joy Rey felt at having such a good friend bubbled up into a laugh, and she held him tighter. “Heaven has blessed me with you, my dear Finn!”

That night, around the remains of the small fire that had cooked their supper, Finn continued to teach them a song he had sung to them the week before. His strong warm voice was a source of pleasure for all in Mrs. Solo’s circle, and though Rey and Poe did not have his talent, they shared his love of singing together. 

The new song was one Finn had learned before he enlisted in the Army, a madrigal for three voices. Finn began, his voice pure and clear, then Rey added hers. When Poe joined, she could almost see their voices in the air, braiding a net that held them and bound them together. Into the dimming twilight they sang,

> _Follow me, follow me, sweet love and soul's delight; _
> 
> _ Or else by my exile my soul is sever'd quite: _
> 
> _ My hand, my heart, my faith, my love, my life is thine, _
> 
> _ O save thine own if thou wilt not do mine. _


	3. Into the Countryside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our hero/ine finds herself alone again and encounters true goodness, vast wilderness, and something very much like evil.
> 
>   
  


The next day began early with a cold breakfast in the saddle and ended late in the barn of a German family in Amity Township. The steamy, still air had pressed down on them all day, until heavy greenish clouds full of rain began to gather in the middle of the afternoon. The Wanns were quiet patriots, friends of Mrs. Solo’s, in a part of the countryside full of loyalists, and the trio had hurried on well past twilight hoping the family would be willing to share a dry place to sleep.

They slept late after their hard day, waking only when the eldest Wann children came in to milk the cows. Rey had been accustomed to traveling on foot for days at a time, but she had never had a horse to ride, and walking never caused her quim to ache the way it did that morning, nor her thighs. She knew she’d be fit again in a day or two, but she groaned as she rose from her bedroll and tried not to limp as she made her way to the outhouse.

They lent a hand with the early chores before setting off toward the main road. The morning was new-washed, breezy and bright, but none of them noticed as they anticipated their goodbyes. They dismounted to take their leave properly. Poe shook her hand as a man would and clapped her on the back, wishing her luck. Finn took both her hands in his and said nothing for a minute. He kissed one hand, then the other, and wished her courage.

Rey went through the motions with them, feeling nothing, letting herself be hugged, and kissed, smiling back and mounting her horse when they mounted theirs. After the last goodbyes, she turned Bonny Boy’s head to the north and urged him to walk, still numb. It was an easy road, her horse had a fine gait, and Rey remained unaware of her surroundings until they came to a creek and Bonny decided he wanted a drink. He was picking his way down the slope when Rey realized the angle of her seat had changed and snapped back to herself.

The sun was high in the sky, not quite noon, and Rey wondered how much time she had lost with her woolgathering. She had let Bonny drink a bit, filled her own waterskin, and steered him back onto the road before she remembered that her friends had left her and she was alone. It felt as if the air was knocked out of her lungs.

Her heart raced and her mouth went dry, and she kicked Bonny into a full gallop, desperate to flee...from what? From a feeling? She remembered that she couldn’t run from a feeling, and then she remembered that Bonny was with her, and she would not be alone again for long. She was safe. She felt a phantom breeze blow past her cheek and thought she heard it whisper, “Never alone...always safe.”

\--------------

She climbed through hills for most of the day and emerged into a wide valley as the sun slanted towards the west. Ripening fields of wheat and barley practically glowed in the rich afternoon light, and Rey took comfort in its beauty. Bonny seemed excited by it, too, and once she turned him toward the northeast to follow the road, she gave him his head and let him sprint for half a mile, until he slowed of his own accord and took up a trotting pace.

A few miles further along, Rey noticed a girl ahead of her, limping down the road. She slowed Bonny to a walk as she came even with the traveler and politely asked if she could help. The girl turned a tear-stained face up to her and inhaled sharply. Rey had spoken in English, and the girl looked up at her for a long moment, confused, before she replied, “ _ Bitte, mein Herr, sprechen Sie Deutsch?” _

“Oh, um,  _ kann ich Dir helfen _ ?” Rey had picked up a little German since she arrived in the City. Mrs. Solo had suggested it would help her gather intelligence and had drilled her herself when they knew she would be traveling through the German settlements.

A torrent of German followed Rey’s question. She caught that the girl had turned her ankle in a groundhog hole while walking across the fields, and still had miles to walk before she was home. 

More slowly, Rey replied. “Allow me to carry you home, Miss.” She looked around the landscape for a likely mounting block, and made her way over to a tree stump before sliding out of the saddle. She made a stirrup of her hands and gestured for the girl to step in. Once she had launched her into the saddle, Rey hauled herself back up behind the girl, who sat sideways in the saddle.

The girl was silent and stiff in front of her, and Rey couldn’t tell if she was shy or truly in pain. Rey didn’t mind the silence - she needed some time to think of how to ask what she wanted to know in German. After another mile of Bonny’s gentle walk, when Rey noticed the girl’s body had relaxed a bit, she ventured to ask a few questions.

The girl, whose name was Madalena, lived on a farm with her mother, sisters, and brothers. She had walked over to a neighbor’s house that morning to deliver some of the honey her mother gathered from their bees. Her father had gone to fight the rebel scum, or at least that was what Rey thought  _ Rebellenabschaum _ meant. 

Rey was not surprised to find herself among Loyalists. She knew many German farmers were loyal to the King, just as many of the Irish and Scots settled further west on the frontier had no love for him. Her own experience in the countryside had taught her that unless presented with an actual battle in their own fields or soldiers at their door, most people were working too hard at survival to worry about picking fights. 

Rey asked if Madalena’s mother might be willing to exchange a meal and a place to sleep for some help with the farm, and the girl smiled for the first time since Rey had rescued her. “Oh, I’m sure she would be very happy, Sir, and my sisters will be, too!”

Bonny Boy’s pace picked up as they neared Madalena’s home, as if the smell of other horses assured him that he’d find a good meal and clean water when he arrived, and soon Rey saw the neat farmstead. A barn with stone foundations and wooden sides rose up high above a neat stone house. A split rail fence surrounded an empty pig pen, and beyond the barn another fifty yards there was another rose-covered fence that kept two sweet cows from wandering off.

Before Bonny reached the barnyard, a small boy ran out yelling at the top of his lungs. Rey thought he was saying something like, “Mama! Mama! Come see Maddie on the pretty horse!”

A tall woman hastened out of the house, unable to run with the baby fastened to her back and a toddler hanging onto her skirts. Emotions flew across her face - she came out ready to scold the boy, but Rey watched as her expression turned to shock, then fear, and then joy as she realized Madalena was smiling and nothing was seriously wrong.

“What happened to you,  _ Mädchen _ ? And who did you bring home with you?”

“His name is  _ Herr _ Ray, Mama. I hurt my ankle and I didn’t know how I would get home. May he stay for supper? He is very kind, but he is  _ Englisch _ .”

Madalena had let her mother inspect her ankle and then slid down into her arms during this speech, and Rey wondered at the woman’s ability to support so many young bodies at once. Seeing nothing truly wrong, she set her daughter down and turned to Rey again, speaking in English now. “I thank you, Mr. Ray. Madalena is a fortunate child. Will you rest here for a bit?”

“Madam, your daughter mentioned that you might welcome an extra pair of hands to help with the chores, and Bonny and I would be grateful to sleep in your barn tonight if we could.”

The woman gave Rey a wry look, “She is too young to know better - I am sure she told you that my husband has been away all summer. We would be very grateful for another pair of capable hands if you have the time to stop.”

Rey took a few minutes to take care of her horse, removing her pack, the saddle, and the blanket before inspecting her hooves and filling the trough with fresh water. She would give him a good brushing later on, after supper. After she had chopped enough kindling to fill the box, Rey took advantage of the sweet-smelling soap one of the girls brought her. While she was washing, Rey heard voices raised inside the house.

“Mama, I am the oldest, I should be allowed to sit next to him!”

“No, I should! You already showed him where to wash up!”

“Mama, I brought him home! Let me sit next to him.”

_ “Gott im Himmel _ ! What will he think of you arguing over him like a pack of dogs with a bone! All of you, hush. He can sit at the head of the table like the man that he is, and the rest of us will sit where we always sit.”

The meal was delicious - a plate full of little dumplings that Madalena called  _ spätzle _ cooked with chicken and carrots and onions. They did not talk much while they ate, but after the table was cleared Madalena’s mother, who introduced herself as Mrs. Kutz, poured Rey a tiny glassful of a cordial made with honey and elderflowers. She gave the children permission to stay and hear the news Rey brought from Philadelphia. Then the eldest girl, Sarah, offered to tell a new story they had heard, and Rey accepted with pleasure.

The other children looked delighted as their sister began to tell the story - it was clearly already a favorite - and she preened to have the attention of the whole household, adding all the flourishes of a born storyteller. 

Mrs. Kutz did not look as happy with the prospect of this tale, though, and as it went on, Rey understood why. Sarah told them all about a force of ghostly soldiers dressed in black, who travelled the countryside helping the good Loyalist forces and frightening cruel and greedy rebel soldiers who stole from local farms. Her description of the soldiers was a more fantastical version of what Rey and Finn heard in the tavern, but it was clear that Sarah was talking about the same force.

One of the older girls, Hannah, turned to her mother. “Do you think that soldier is beset by Avarice, Mama? Like in the story? Because of the smoke.”

“Perhaps he is, my love. Do you think Herr Ray knows that story? I wonder if he would like it.”

A chorus of pleading answered her question, and Frau Kutz smiled and started to tell her family’s favorite tale.

“Long, long ago, when the world was still brand new, there was a young demon who looked on what God had created and found himself quite bored. He saw the rich greens and yellows of the plants, the deep blue waters, and the beautiful creatures enjoying the new paradise, and he said to himself, ‘This is just too peaceful. How can I make things more interesting’”

Frau Kutz turned to the smallest children, who were curled up at her feet, and whispered, “I think perhaps he was a bit jealous that God could create such wonders, don’t you?” 

She continued. “And then he had a wonderful, wicked idea! He would plant the seeds of sin in each good gift. So, into God’s newest creations, the people, he planted Pride, so that they might begin to think they deserved what they had and forget to be grateful to their Maker.”

“He planted Envy beside it, so that a man might begin to covet what God had seen fit to give someone else.”

“Behind the new creatures’ eyes, he planted Lust, so that the love of Adam for Eve would plunge him into suffering rather than lifting him towards heaven.”

“Into the rich, black soil he planted Gluttony, so that men might always want more of the fruits of the earth, and forget to stop when their hunger was satisfied.”

“And deeper down, into the rocks beneath the rich soil, he planted Avarice, so that man might feel the urge to hoard the rare gifts of iron and gold and precious stones when they finally learned how to find them.”

“Don’t forget Wrath, Mama! And Sloth!” piped in Michael, jumping up from his seat to be sure he was heard.

“Yes, he made those, too, and more besides. And we know all about them because those seeds still sprout in the world, and we must learn to prune them. Now, do you want to hear the rest or is it time for bed?”

Michael returned to his seat in silence to show that he wanted her to continue.

“So, the demon thought to taint God’s gifts, but he really had no idea what he was meddling with. You see, back when the world was new, it practically buzzed with power wherever God’s hands had been. Adam and Eve had only to  _ think _ of a new type of fruit, and it would spring up from the dirt.”

“After the demon planted his seeds, he turned away to act on his next wicked whim. He thought that it would take some time for each sin to sprout and grow into something entertaining. But behind him, the sins he was inventing sprang up as embodied spirits. He thought that they would stay where he put them until they infected God’s creatures, but each sin rose up from where he had planted it and began to look for someone to torment.”

“Now remember, Eve had not yet tasted the apple that taught her to recognize sin, so these spirits could not torment her or Adam. They just went about their lives, blissfully in love with each other and with their Creator.“

“That meant that the only creature the newly released sins could find who understood them was the demon himself, and they tormented him without mercy.”

“He could not sleep, or eat, or enjoy the things demons enjoy most without one of his own inventions sidling up to him and whispering in his ear. Their words made him suffer and hurt and  _ want  _ all of the things he did not have. He had scarcely a moment’s peace! But then, one night he woke up and knew what he had to do. And that was why he hatched his plan to go to Eve and tempt her to taste the Fruit of Knowledge.

“With that monstrous trick, the demon saved himself. And gradually, as Adam and Eve’s children multiplied and spread across the Earth, most of the sins found homes and faded into the forms we know now. We cannot see them anymore, but we feel them, don’t we, wriggling their way in to separate us from God?”

“Almost all of them faded, but some believe that one grasping, greedy sin held on. Avarice, which started deep in the earth, went back to the buried seams of gold and iron and coal and waited. He loved his ability to torture men too much, and so he lurks there, lying in wait until he finds someone vulnerable to torture with his whispered lies. They say he smells of boiling metal and sulfurous smoke, and surrounds his victims in an impenetrable darkness.”

The young faces ranged around the table were all somber and sad, mirrors of Rey’s feelings as she took in Mrs. Kutz’s story. The woman looked around at all her children and then at Rey, and her eyes lingered there as if she were looking for something in particular. She finished her story, a gentle smile warming her face as she reminded her children of the happy ending.

“Of course, God would not leave his creatures prey to such an evil without help. He gave us loving hearts and courage to overcome all the evils that foolish demon made.” 

Her eyes fell on Rey and stayed there, as if the ending were just for her guest.

“And time and again, Avarice is driven back. Whenever it emerges from its grave to attack one of his beloved children, God raises up an equally powerful light to meet it.”

“And who knows?” She turned back to her children. “Perhaps it will be one of you that God calls to carry that light some day.”

“Now, off to your prayers!”

The children shuffled off to bed then at their mother’s insistence, and Rey could hear them frightening each other and giggling as they changed into their night clothes. Mrs. Kutz lit a lantern and walked Rey out to the barn, and helped her gather sweet hay into a comfortable cushion for her own bedroll.

They worked quietly until Mrs. Kutz turned to go, lifting the lantern up to illuminate Rey’s face. “Does your disguise truly fool other people? Forgive me, but you are no more a boy than those silly daughters of mine.”

Rey was startled by the direct question. While she supposed other people could have guessed her secret, especially in the last few months as Mrs. Kalonia’s cooking allowed her to add muscle to her willowy frame, no one had ever looked further than the trousers.

“I only really need to fool men, Mrs. Kutz, and they seem to be less likely to really look at me. But I apologize for deceiving you.”

“Well, my daughters would be heartbroken, of course, but I have no intention of telling anyone. Now tell me, you seemed to have heard that story of Sarah’s before, and you know there is truth in it. Tell me what you think it means.”

Rey thought about insisting that she knew nothing, but something told her she should trust this kind and capable woman. Rey told her what she had heard, and explained her errand to fetch help from someone who could be the dark soldier’s equal. She told her where she had been sent to look, in the wilderness beyond the Wyoming Valley.

“Well, you shall have a reward for your truthfulness, I think. My brother’s farm is on the Susquehanna, in the Wyoming Valley, and with my letter, he will be happy to share whatever information he has, whether you show up as a boy or a girl. But I should tell you that his eldest is nearly twenty-three and may be a bit more desperate for your attention if you choose to go as a boy.”

Rey dreamt that night of Avarice, drifting like oily smoke along the streambeds of her mountain home as it searched for its next victim. She felt no fear as she watched him rise from the ground, and the smoke stayed far away from her.

She helped with the chores the next morning before accepting a small packet from Mrs. Kutz. The promised letter accompanied bread, butter and honey sandwiches and three kinds of dried fruit, and Rey kept Bonny to a slow walk as she left the farm so the children could come with her as far as the main road.

\---------------

It was an uneventful summer day of easy travel along level ground. She passed farmers heading the same direction as she was, many with carts full of produce to be shipped down the Lehigh river, and others returning with smaller loads of trade goods. The land felt different than anything she’d seen before, but she couldn’t have described why. The feeling was reinforced by the black stripes that ran through the cut-away banks of the streams she crossed. Something about the way the black strata absorbed the light made her shiver.

She crossed the river that afternoon and made her way to Bath, where she sought out friends of Mrs. Solo’s who were happy to let her sleep in the house. The next day, she followed their clear directions to a road that led west, crossing the Blue Mountains at Wind Gap.

Rey’s path the next day would continue on to the northwest, but she always felt safer tucked into a ridge, with some trees for cover, so she pulled Bonny’s head to the right and followed a deer path, parallel to the line of hills she had just crossed. A little more than a mile off the road, the slope began to flatten out into a little meadow, cradled in a gap between the ridge behind her and the one ahead. She thought it might be a perfect place to rest for the night, and a little spring bubbling up out of the rocks confirmed it. 

Wearily, she slid down Bonny’s side and carefully put her weight on her feet, giving her muscles a few minutes to get used to supporting her again. After unloading her pack and loosening Bonny’s saddle, she led him over to the stream, where both of them bent their heads for a long drink.

Happy to be off the horse, quiet and not moving, Rey flopped back and welcomed the solitude. She had seen thunderheads mounded up behind the range of mountains to the west, but the sky immediately above her was still an impossible blue, decorated with fluffy white clouds. The breeze that came in ahead of the storm was warm and sweet, and the sound of leaves moving in it and the spring burbling filled her ears. She had missed the peace of being outside, all by herself in the woods. 

The City was exciting, and she loved having friends to care for - people who cared for her - but she felt alive in a different way as she lay on her back on the sun-warmed rock. It was as if the rock had an energy of its own, and when she was still like this, she could feel that energy flow through her and down again deep into the heart of the hill. The breeze swept her hair back off her face and the spring sang to her, while behind her closed eyes she saw the energy spread out around her to all the living, breathing, growing things down the slopes on either side.

She had played this game on her own, before she traveled east with Finn, but it had been months since she’d been in a place that felt this right.

Rey might have drifted off for a time, because she remembered a dream in which the spring’s singing began to resolve into words, and the breeze caressing her hair began to sing in harmony. There was something about a maiden sleeping on a moor, making her bed in red roses and lilies, and the voices were both low and gentle, though the voice in the spring was pitched lower and the voice in her head seemed to smile, though the tune was sad.

She wanted to hear the song again and again, until she could sing along, but she emerged from her dream to the faint sound of voices and the smell of wood smoke. She was fully awake in a moment, lying motionless but taking in the evidence of men camped nearby. The wind blew the voices around, and it took her several minutes to determine they came from the side of the slope opposite the one she’d climbed. They weren’t too close, so Rey took the risk of standing up and creeping forward until she could see down into the valley.

The slope was much steeper on the east side, and Rey was practically looking down on the men’s camp when she finally spotted them, deep in shadow beneath the ridge - a smart place to camp with a storm coming. They were in the process of setting up their camp, raising dirty canvas tents, starting cooking fires. A few hundred yards beyond them, cattails and tufts of sedge marked the edge of a marsh and stretched back into a dark expanse of glass-flat water, pierced here and there by the skeletons of drowned trees. The marsh was alive with birds hunting for mosquitoes as the sun set, martins and swallows darting above the cattail, rails poking in the water below, and a pair of eagles high above, searching for fish out over the deeper water. There were ducks out, too, and Rey was not surprised to see two men with fowling guns picking their way out across the boggy ground.

She thought they might be soldiers, based on their tents, all the same shape and size. Nothing else about them was uniform, though. As far as she could tell, beneath the dirt their coats were varying shades of brown and blue and green. If she was right, they were the first soldiers she had seen on her journey since she left Washington’s camp at Wissahickon. They might be the vanguard of troops coming down from New York, or a deployment of spies, or simply foragers out looking for food. Unsure who they were or what they might need, Rey carefully stepped back from the edge of the ridge and returned to Bonny.

She wouldn’t build a fire - the risk of the smell of smoke was too great, and the rain would have washed it out soon enough. She would still need shelter, but instead of suspending her canvas tarp from a tree at a comfortable height for herself and Bonny, she moved down the west side of the ridge and scouted out a large rock that would provide partial shelter for both of them. With any luck, the storm would be quick.

The wind picked up a few hours after sunset, and Rey finally drifted into a shallow sleep with the sound of rustling leaves for her lullaby.

\---------------

The first steady drops of rain woke her a little later. She reached for the tarp and had started to settle down again when she noticed the air felt different. It was a little like the storm’s electricity, the smell of ozone, but not quite. The difference nagged at her. It was familiar somehow, but her body was telling her it was dangerous, responding to the mysterious threat by preparing her to flee. Then, through the rising noise of the storm, Rey heard men shouting.

Rey’s body wanted her to stay put. Her legs were jelly, but she knew she needed to see the threat, and once her decision was made she felt as if someone had put a strong, calming hand over her chest. Her heart and breathing slowed, so that she could creep over to the edge of the ridge again without panicking.

The shouting was coming from below, and the acrid smell of smoke was stronger there, too. Rey peered through the darkness, but she could see very little in the dark and rain. She had to interpret the sounds she was hearing. There were hooves pounding and splashing, which meant horses below that hadn’t been there in the evening. The men’s voices were full of fear. She heard shouts of warning, shots fired, a bellowing cry of anger cut short, the eerie high-pitched screams of men run through with blades.

The sounds filled her with terror, but she was glued to the spot.

The first bolt of lightning struck and Rey saw the scene below her in a sickening flash. There were men on horseback riding through the camp. The soldiers were scattered, some running into the marsh, others already lying still in the shallow water. In the darkness after the flash, Rey thought she could see the men running, but she realized that the silvery shapes she was looking at were nothing like the soldiers. The edges of these shapes glowed with a different sort of light, outlining an assortment of men from every time and place Rey had ever learned about. She recognized the long naked limbs and dress of a Shawnee warrior, a Cavalier in full trousers, the chain mail and tabard of a Crusader.

In the next flash, Rey could see the soldiers running before these ghosts, heading straight for the marsh to avoid the ghostly swords and clubs. She saw the men on horseback waiting for them in the marsh, and watched them cut one soldier down there as his steps slowed in the sucking mud.

In the next few minutes of darkness, Rey saw the glowing shapes flow back toward one spot and swirl there like a cloud. Rey’s desire to learn what was going on in the valley had overcome her caution, and she rose to her full height on a prominent rock to see more when the next bolt of lighting struck somewhere behind her.

Her eyes were on the spot where the ghosts had gathered, and the lighting bolt showed her another black-clad man there. He was reaching toward the last few frantic soldiers with one shaking arm and pounding his side with the closed fist of the other. His head had been bent forward in concentration, but in the drawn-out flash of a chain of lighting, she saw him lift his head and look straight in her direction.

She could not have seen his expression at that distance, even without the screen of rain between them. Nevertheless, she felt pinned by his eyes, hypnotized like prey in striking distance of a rattlesnake. She felt a nudge in her head, and then the spell broke, and she turned around and ran as fast as she could into the depths of the woods, in search of a place that would be safe from those predatory eyes.

Rey hunkered down behind a broad tree trunk, settling herself into a tangle of brush that would hide her from any but the most skilled tracker. As the minutes passed and her breathing slowed, she began to think more rationally. There was not much reason for him to come after her. She remembered that both horse and rider were massive, and she was hundreds of feet up a steep ridge that even the surest pony could hardly climb. He would probably have to travel miles to go around the ridge, and one ragged boy couldn’t be worth that much to him.

She lulled herself with these thoughts, but did not sleep, even as the rain and wind died down. Still alert to every sound, she heard the crashing of a large body through the underbrush approaching from along the ridge. She felt her heart speed up again and struggled to keep her breath steady and silent.

The  sound of heavy footsteps crashing through twigs and dead leaves grew louder, coming straight toward her. Rey did not have time to register how odd it was that he hadn’t even paused to look for clues about the direction she had headed before he grabbed hold of her ankle and dragged her out from her hiding place.

He took a heavy step back and looked like he was preparing to kick her, and she scrambled back and up to her feet before he could swing his leg. She stopped suddenly, brought up short by the tree that had been her shelter, and he moved in to pin her while drawing back one gloved fist for a crushing blow.

“Wait, please wait!” she sputtered, not expecting her words to have any effect. But his fist stopped moving, and his masked face stilled, too. The mask was a piece of black cloth pulled up to cover his nose and mouth, and a stripe of paint or soot blackened the skin around his eyes.

“A child?” he muttered. He grabbed her by both arms and pulled her away from the tree into a brighter patch, studying her face. The black surrounding his eyes made it obvious when they widened, and he tilted his head as if he were listening to someone Rey could not see. A moment later he had let go of one arm and reached between her legs, groping for something he did not find. When he had thoroughly explored everywhere her masculine equipment could possibly be, he snatched his hand away as if she had burned him, and shoved her away with the hand still on her arm. 

“The girl…”

Without stopping to think, Rey sprang up and turned to run away again, heading downhill for the sake of speed. She had just spied a way through a tangle of brush when she felt her body thrown forward and a great weight landed on her legs. She came down on a dry patch of dirt and felt the impact vibrate through her head, clouding her vision and preventing her from moving for a moment. He dragged himself up her body from where he had tackled her, efficiently imprisoning her.

She realized why he had chosen to simply lie on her when she heard him panting. He was winded, and his head dropped onto her back like a dead weight. She felt his voice rumble through her back as he asked, “Where is my warrior?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and in which the author's genealogical dabbling informs her storytelling. The inhabitants of Amity and the Wyoming Valley mentioned here were real landowners who lived in those places before the war. Frau Kutz's brother and his family found themselves on the wrong side after the war ended and decamped to what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada.
> 
> Frau Kutz herself is modeled after my favorite German-speaking, bee-keeping, elderwine-making Reylo, for no reason other than her help with the delicious translation of Rebel Scum. The story she tells is completely made up, and meant to reflect a historically appropriate understanding of God's presence in the world, while expounding a bit on my _Statera Trium_-inspired Snoke head canon.


	4. Master of the Knights of Ren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we see through the eyes of Kylo Ren
> 
>   
  


There was no denying the beauty of the wilderness they rode through that summer morning. Kylo Ren had seen many landscapes from his beloved Silencer’s sleek black back - rocky red deserts in the Punjab, terraced rice gardens in South China, mist-shrouded hills in Scotland - but there was something in the vast American forests that called to him. He had stopped thinking of any place as home long ago, but he could not deny the sense of familiarity here.

Kylo and his irregulars were making their way south around a range of mountains the local Dutch settlers called the Catskills. When they had landed at Brooklyn late in the spring, their plan was to use their special talents to terrorize the rural settlements and discourage enlistment in the settlements around New York, isolating the New England colonies. 

They spent several weeks riding down out of the forested hills onto the New Jersey highlands, striking quickly before returning west to travel unseen behind the ridges. They had just turned north to use the same tactics in the Hudson River Valley, intending to prepare the way for General Howe’s regular forces to march north, when they were called back and ordered to head south again instead. The idiot Howe had chosen to think for himself and set sail for Philadelphia, putting Ren on a collision course with the one place in the colonies he had no interest in revisiting.

Howe’s decision changed their direction but not their tactics, and his men were glad to continue raiding farms and hunting rag-tag bands of colonial militia. He had hand-picked each of his companions during his journeys across the British Empire, seeking out hardened soldiers who would rather travel the world and fight than grow fat as warlords in their own countries. They liked to call themselves Knights - though there was nothing chivalrous about them except their horsemanship - and they traveled in rough style, with pack horses and two servants to cook and maintain their gear and care for the horses.

Silencer seemed pleased with the landscape, too. He had managed the Atlantic crossing as well as could be expected, but it had taken a week or two for him to recover his appetite and strength. Now his pure black coat shone in the sun, and Kylo was relieved to see the glint in his eye as the trail stretched out ahead of them. He found himself thinking of the way Han Solo’s horses had looked whenever they rode out of the City. Solo had bred them for function rather than style, and they were a motley crew of mismatched, mixed-breed creatures, but as soon as they approached those shady stretches and knew they were in for a proper gallop, their true beauty shone.

Memories of the Solos always brought pain, and he had spent most of the last month in a fugue of irritability as the landscape pressed memories on him. The distinctive smell of the forest here under the summer sun brought back trips with Han Solo, and as he studied the terrain to plan his attacks, he heard Luke Skywalker’s lectures on geography and respect for wild landscapes. The man expressed so much faith in the goodness of creation; his ideal of the noble savage colored every political history lesson, and yet he had been unable to see a hint of goodness in his own nephew. Skywalker tried to train the boy to use his rational mind and to constrain and soothe chaotic emotions. But when he failed, and Ben had told him that he could no longer see his own guardian ghosts, the teacher had concluded his charge was irredeemable, a menace to be exiled from his Academy.

Ben Solo’s exile was the making of Kylo Ren. Freed from Luke’s ineffective lessons, he began to listen more to the Dark spirit that had been working for years to befriend him, the entity that called itself Snoke. When his emotions overwhelmed him, Snoke showed him the relief in acting out, and introduced him to more violent outlets for the inferno inside him. When he attained his majority, he chose to take on the inheritance his Uncle had disclaimed, and cast off his given names. 

As Kylo Ren, he began a short career as a licentious rake, spending a London season indulging every passion. When he tired of that, he spent more and more time alone in his London house, in conversation with Snoke. Snoke was the one who taught him about the darkness inside him, and how to use it. There were ghosts in the world full of regret and loneliness, eager for subjugation and purpose, and Ren had been happy to provide both.

No love for King and country motivated him to volunteer his services to the Crown. He was simply bored and sought new avenues to practice and expand his powers. The King’s advisors had turned their noses up at his offer and refused to receive him, but Armitage Hux, an East India Company representative, called on him at home the next day and offered an open-ended engagement. For ten years Kylo Ren travelled as far from the world of that lost child as it was possible to go. He developed a warrior’s muscles, surpassed all of Snoke’s expectations, and built himself a new family of his own choosing, his Knights of Ren.

The man on Silencer’s back was not the same person as the child who left the American continent nearly twenty years before, but he could not inhale the damp air rising from the warming forest floor without remembering what that child had felt: the feeling of home and safety lost, of love and support withdrawn.

He did not try to find words for those feelings, but instinctively channeled them into the rage that drove him. He felt a kind of joy, too, knowing what he and his men could do now to the people on this continent - the people who had betrayed him. The titled men back in England thought this war would be over quickly. Kylo knew better, and rejoiced in it. He knew it would be fatal to underestimate the mettle of the farmers and tradesmen who had carved lives for themselves out of this wilderness. The landscape itself would be their foe - weather, terrain, and vast unpopulated distances the British still failed to understand, despite the wars they’d already fought on the continent. The war would not be short, but Ren knew their victory was inevitable. No force on any continent withstood his Dark strength for long.

\----------------

They stopped for the night in a meadow overlooking Basher Kill. The raid they’d conducted the day before had yielded fresh pork, excellent tobacco, and news of a small militia group returning home from a season supporting the forces outside New York. They tracked the group south and would catch up with them the next day. Ren watched his men tuck into their suppers, visited Silencer to make sure he was clean and comfortable, then retired early to his tent, claiming a need to meditate.

In truth, he was exhausted. The nightmares he had known his whole life had grown much worse since he’d returned to the continent. He could not remember the last time he’d slept through the night; if he wasn’t rising at the witching hour to lead a raid, he was waking to a sense of anxiety about the next one. 

As a small child, he had vivid, lovely dreams. Often, they included a man and woman that looked like the portraits he had seen of his grandparents. They told him that they were ghosts and taught him all about himself and his family. Ben tried to explain these dreams to his parents, but his mother was often too busy to find time to listen to his childish rambling, and his father tended to cut him short as soon as he mentioned the ghosts. 

The ghosts helped him understand that adults weren’t always the best listeners, and they helped him in other ways, too. When he struggled with his penmanship and his tutor tried to teach him by smacking his hands, his grandmother inhabited his hand and showed him how to use his muscles to initiate each stroke, and how to angle the quill so it never snagged on the paper. The next day his tutor had been astonished.

Even before he left Philadelphia, the loving ghosts were slowly being replaced by dreams full of darkness, mist, choking smoke, and faint shapes lit by flickering torches. He rarely remembered what happened or who was in these dreams, but he would wake from them full of painful emotions that kept him from returning to sleep. Every so often, when his heart was hurting more than usual, a young woman would appear. She looked like an engraving of Jeanne D’Arc in one of his favorite history books, but fiercer, wearing an old-fashioned silvery tunic and hose. Her presence in his dreams was like a cool breeze blowing through, chasing away the fog and smoke. 

Snoke had taught him that the dark, smoke-filled dreams arose from his Dark nature, which developed as he came of age. The ghosts of his childhood dreams disappeared because they recognized this Darkness. Snoke explained the silvery warrior as a manifestation of the weakness that lived in his heart. When he achieved his full Dark potential, she would vanish, too.

But she never left his dreams for more than a month or two at a time, and as the dreams had grown worse in the last month, she had grown more active. He often dreamt of being bound in the dark, powerless to save his men, who faced some unknown horror they could not defeat without him. The dream changed every night, but the feelings of powerlessness and terror remained the same. She would appear, shining through the dark, her presence calming him. Then she would act however he needed her to, releasing him from the spell, cutting the ropes that bound him, pulling him up out of deep water that dragged him down.

That night in the camp by the Kill, he dreamt of her again. The nightmare began with an image of his mother, the first time he had seen her face in many years. He knew she was in great danger, alone in the Philadelphia house. His men were mounting an attack on her, and he could not command them to stop. The ghosts he summoned to stop the Knights joined them instead, flowing ahead of them and swirling around her while she called out for help. The warrior woman appeared then, took his head between her strong, gentle hands, and kissed his mouth until the sound came out again, and he could call off the soldiers and ghosts.

He woke to feelings of relief and wonder, a warm sense of security, before those all curdled into shame. Compassion for anyone, let alone his mother, was a weakness unbecoming of someone with his power in the Dark. No one would be coming to rescue him from himself.

He slept again, without dreaming, and woke to the pre-dawn din of birdsong. They broke camp quickly and set out to track the colonials down a river valley opening up in front of them. 

By that afternoon, one of his men had scouted their location. They were camped on a narrow strip of dry ground tucked between a ridge and a broad marsh, and Ren remembered again what Skywalker had taught him about using the landscape as an ally. The weather would dictate their timing; the noise of a summer storm coming in from the west would help increase the confusion and terror. He offered up a prayer of gratitude to whichever dark spirit had led their quarry to this exact spot.

A few hours after nightfall, as the wind rose to a howl ahead of the storm, Ren and his men rode through the camp, rousing their victims with unearthly cries in half a dozen languages, randomly thrusting sabers into the canvas tents to get them out quickly, before they could begin to think about how to protect themselves.

As the terrified colonials emerged, Ren and his men galloped back to the margin of the swamp to carry out the rest of his plan. Ren pivoted away from the others, riding a little way up the slope to better orchestrate the action. In spite of their precautions, some quick-thinking colonial soldier managed to load a weapon and a shot tore into his side as he wheeled Silencer back around to face the killing field. With the feeling of burning pain came the echo of a cackling laugh - Snoke exulting in the knowledge of what pain would do to increase his power.

He called down the ghosts then, losing himself to the crackling rush of power flowing through him. As the ghosts did his bidding, he could see the scene through all of their eyes at once. Lightning flickered over the men spreading out beneath them, but he no longer needed light to see. Snoke was whispering in his ear, more sensation than sound, building up the pain and rage that gave him strength. The ghosts followed his commands; the colonials ran into the mire, straight into his men’s sabers. He felt the growing cold and a sense of pressure in his head as the ghosts returned to him. His work was almost done.

A gleam like moonlight caught his eye, then, high up on the ridge to his right. He thought it might be a stray ghost, but in the darkness between lightning strikes he saw a figure and heard it call to him. He was reminded of the warrior from his dreams, though he had never heard her speak before. In the next blaze of lightning he saw the outline of a living human, their face turned toward him, and in the long chain of lightning that followed he saw them both, superimposed as if they occupied the same space.

Impelled by the need to know more, he wheeled Silencer around and kicked him into a gallop away from the encampment, back to a break in the ridge they passed as they began the night’s work. He thought of nothing besides working to find a path to the top of the ridge. Snoke hissed in his ear, trying to convince him to turn back, but instead he dug deep to listen to the voices of other ghosts who could guide him through the darkness. When he reached a spot on the other side of the ridge, beneath where the figures had appeared, he could see a silvery glow, a beacon hovering behind a tree halfway up the slope.

He leapt from Silencer’s back and made a beeline toward the light, but when he arrived there was no ghost, only a cowering creature trying to hide. In his frustration, with the Dark power still flowing through him, he seized the creature’s leg and pulled it out, ready to smash and destroy. But then the creature spoke, and the voice startled him. It was low, but not a man’s voice at all. The creature he held by one arm was dressed in a man’s clothes, but its face was smooth and its jaw round. A child? Snoke’s voice whispered in his ear that it was a woman.

Unbelieving, Ren pursued the most expedient way to learn the truth, grabbing the front of the creature’s breeches. Feeling nothing, he cupped his hand lower down, between its legs, and felt nothing but the damp heat of rain-drenched clothes. An image flashed before him, a memory he had forgotten, the first time he saw the warrior on the wharf when he was still a boy. In the same instant he pushed the young woman away in horror and surprise. “The girl…”

She was not as paralyzed with fear as he was with surprise, and she had the presence of mind to turn and hurtle down the slope. Without thinking, he chased after her, throwing his body after hers and bringing them both down hard. As he lay there struggling to breathe, he realized that the hard landing was not the only reason he was having trouble. The wound in his side was bleeding heavily. He breathed through the pain -- once, twice -- focused on the vision that had sent him running in the first place, and croaked, “Where is my warrior?”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter and a slip of an epilogue to follow. As I tried to indicate in the tags, the ending here will be equivalent to TFA, meaning that things are left hanging a bit...just thought it would be fair to warn you!


	5. Ghosts' Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which so many questions are answered at once that Rey (and your author) are overwhelmed. And in which Kylo Ren's lack of faith leads to a disturbing conclusion.
> 
> Look at this INTENSE image of Kylo Ren chasing down Rey, art I commissioned from the talented Ludo! Here she is on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/search?q=%40ludopstudio&src=typd), and here she is on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thebadjediandthegoodsith/pseuds/Thebadjediandthegoodsith)!
> 
>   
  


Rey felt very odd. Perhaps it was the blow to her head, but all at once, her twitching muscles went limp and the message they had screamed at her to  _ run away _ went silent. The weight of the monstrous soldier pressing her into the earth should have been terrifying, but her body refused to acknowledge what her brain knew. Something about his weight on her felt familiar, and even safe. It was hard to breathe, though, and she squirmed trying to push up to make room for her lungs to expand.

“Be still. You are not going anywhere,” the man’s voice rumbled through her back. He sounded exhausted, but that did little to soften the command and coldness in his tone. She could feel him pull the mask away from his mouth before he said, more clearly now, “Who sent you?”

“Sent me?” she wheezed, unable to take a full breath. “I saw that battle by accident. Who are you?”

“You expect me to believe that a girl with your traits just happened to cross my path in this vast wilderness of a colony?”

“What do you mean, ‘traits’?”

“Answer the question! You do not want me to have to force the information out of you.” It was clear from the way he said it that she would not want that.

She had to think quickly to find a story he might believe, now that he knew she was a girl. “I ran away...from my Mistress...wanted to find...my brother...a solider...” Her sentences came out in short bursts as she struggled to expand her chest to inhale. “But what do you mean, traits?”

He didn’t respond for several seconds. In fact, he hardly breathed, and she wondered if he had lost consciousness. But when she began to push herself up experimentally, he roused and moved to pin her down again.

“The ghost.”

“What ghost? Your ghosts?”

“No, yours.”

He went still again after these baffling words, and Rey put it down to delirium. She wriggled again, experimentally, and he didn’t respond. She tried pushing herself up. When he remained motionless, she pushed up as hard as she could and rolled her body out from under his. 

She ran then, and did not look back.

\----------------

The birds had begun to sing by the time she found her camp again, though the sky was only just beginning to shift from black to the deep purple grey before dawn. A soft whistle brought Bonny Boy out from behind the rock where he’d been sheltering, and she was relieved to find her pack where she’d left it, mostly dry beneath the tarp.

She was shaking - probably from her relief at escaping, but also from the cold. Her shirt and breeches felt wet and clammy still. She had been drenched as she watched the massacre below the ridge, and she must have been sweating with fear ever since. She filled up the waterskins at the spring, then loaded everything onto Bonny’s back just as the sun began to rise.

The sun spreading across the land to the east made Rey wonder how much of what she had seen was real, and in spite of a strong urge to get as far away as possible, she knew it would be a good idea to look at the field again in the morning light and gather what intelligence she could from what was left behind. 

Mist rose off the swamp’s dark surface like steam from a wash kettle. The bodies of a dozen soldiers broke the glassy expanse. Mud was churned up all around the margins. The neat row of canvas tents remained, silent and empty. Many of the soldiers’ long guns remained stacked in pyramids, stocks down and barrels forming the point, as they would have been carefully placed before the men lay down for the night.

She bent her head for a moment to wish the soldiers’ souls safe journeys, and opened her eyes to the sight of dried blood staining her left side. The earlier clamminess was explained, and there was now a stiff dark stain extending from a few inches above the hem of her shirt down to her hip. She frantically felt her skin for damage before she remembered the wound in the monstrous soldier’s side. This was his blood, and there was so much of it, there was every chance that he was dead.

It explained why he hadn’t come after her yet. She had half expected to hear the crashing sound of his pursuit ever since she left his body on the ground behind her. She felt as if she had been in a nightmare - was still in it - and even with his blood all over her clothes, she had a hard time believing he was not a spirit himself.

She was not sure when she decided to find a path that Bonny could follow to the spot where she had left him. She thought that Finn would have wanted her to be brave, and she should go back to find out what she could about who the man was, but those justifications came to her only after she was on her way back to him.

She saw his horse peacefully cropping at a clump of grass, then spotted the man a moment later, lying half on his side where she had left him. His face was white rather than the waxy bluish color of a dead man’s, and his skin gleamed with sweat. He was not dead. Rey felt an odd surge of relief as she halted several paces away. She watched the faint movement of his breath and wondered what to do next.

Again, she couldn’t have explained why she chose to move forward and kneel at his side to see what she could do for him. She certainly didn’t decide that it was a good idea, but she felt a push at the bottom of her spine, and then her legs were moving and she was next to him, examining the torn and bloodied hole that went through his coat, waistcoat and shirt, right down into the flesh of his side. She had pulled the smothering cloth mask away from his face and was unbuttoning his waistcoat when he roused and grabbed her arm. She looked down at him, petrified, but his eyes never focused on her. They rolled back in his head and his hand dropped, and she went back to her work.

Rey didn’t remember a time before she knew which herbs were safe and good for different ailments, and she carried packets of the most useful ones. Mrs. Kalonia had added to her knowledge of healing with lectures on the value of hot water and cleanliness, and she had given Rey a small tin pot to add to her kit. There was sweet spring water to heat for a poultice, but she had nothing she could use for bandages besides her own clothes, which were hardly clean. She had seen saddlebags on his horse, though, so after she got a small fire burning steadily, she went to investigate.

One bag held a clean shirt and small clothes, all black. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen a black shirt in her life, and here was one in fabric as fine as anything that hung on Mrs. Solo’s washline. She caressed the smooth finish once or twice before using her knife to slit the hem so that she could rip long strips out of it. She hoped they were long enough to wrap around his chest. 

There was a flask of spirits in the bags, too, and Rey knew that doctors sometimes used that, but she had never seen Mrs. Kalonia apply them, so she left it and used the hot water and one of the sleeves of his now-ruined shirt to wipe away the blood and dirt that clung to his wound. He moaned and flinched when she got close to the torn skin, but did not wake. She made a poultice with the herbs she’d brought and some she’d gathered, and wrapped it in the other sleeve before applying it over the hole in his side and binding it tight with the torn strips.

He was by far the largest man she had ever seen, and working the bandage ends underneath his chest where he lay on the ground was hard work. After she had spread her blanket behind him and pushed him over onto it, she sat back to rest and studied him. 

His profile was remarkable, his chin and forehead both sloping away from his nose in a way that should have made him look weak. His lips were full and pink, and his unnaturally pale skin was dotted with beauty marks. He wore his glossy black hair pulled back and tied in a queue at his neck, though stray pieces had escaped the tight braid and stuck to his face. He was prettier than any of the flirts in the City, and yet his strength was also clear, even as he lay there unmoving. 

For no particular reason, she found a clean, damp scrap of his destroyed shirt and leaned over his face to wipe the black stripe from his eyes. It was some kind of black grease, bear fat and soot if she had to guess, so she dabbed a few drops of the whiskey she’d found onto the fabric and gently stroked the rag over his brows, across the curve of bone beneath his eyes, unable to look away from the ragged harmony of his face.

Overcome by the exhaustion of her interrupted night, she began to nod off as she leaned over him. She decided there was little risk in resting her eyes while she waited to see whether he would get better or worse. She moved back across the small fire and lay down to rest.

She woke a bit later to the sound of voices, but she was in a state between sleeping and waking in which she was not sure she could move and did not want to try. She heard the soldier’s voice - weak and quiet but unmistakably his.

“Is she the girl? But she does not see them now?”

He was pausing as if in conversation with someone else, but she thought he must be delirious and talking to himself. As he continued to talk - quietly, not at all like a mad man - she became aware of the smell of burning. It was not the familiar smell of the wood fire she had built, but the same acrid smell of smoke that permeated the battle below the ridge. As the smell became sharper, she also began to hear a voice replying to the wounded man. The sound felt physically uncomfortable, with a raspy whine to it that bit at her ears.

“It will not be long now before she finds out, and her power will grow. A worthy opponent at last.”

“She hardly seems strong enough.”

“How strong were you when you came to me? She is looking for the ghost seeker - he will be able to teach her.”

The soldier let out a low growl at the words “ghost seeker” and Rey felt hatred roll off him. The sound and the emotion together broke whatever bonds of sleep had been keeping her eyes closed, and she opened them to see a strange sight. The soldier lay where she’d placed him, and his eyes were still closed, but there was a man sitting on his chest. The bottom of the man’s legs disappeared into the ground, and the rest of his body was transparent. He wore a coat of dirty golden cloth, and his face was misshapen, sly and cruel. The smell of burning and rotten eggs seemed to seep into the air around him.

At the wounded man’s head were two more figures. They also appeared to be planted in the earth. Rey could only see their busts, necks and heads, as if they were standing on a platform somewhere below the ground. An exquisite woman, her hair twisted into innumerable braids and curls, looked down at the soldier and smoothed his hair, though the dark waves did not move beneath her transparent hands. Rey saw her lips move and thought she could hear the faint sound of singing, very far away. Behind her was a young man dressed in a Jesuit’s simple robe. He wore his dark hair loose and wild around a long, sad face. 

The woman looked up and smiled. “Ah! Welcome back, Rey.”

Before she had time to understand what she was seeing, she was plunging straight into a dream she had had many times before. The vast and wild ocean and the rocky and grey island were much as they’d been every other time she remembered having this dream, but she did not recall ever dreaming of being on a ship just offshore, or of the warmth of the arms around her, or of the two voices singing to her. One was high and sweet, the other deep and warm. Together they were teaching young Rey a song that went with the lesson they had been desperate for her to learn.

_ Come not nigh me, you ghosts of grey _

_ Take you your visions far away _

_ Make not your home within my breast _

_ Follow the sun into the west _

_ Set you in darkness ev’r to stay _

_ Do not come nigh me, ghosts of grey. _

Rey felt the strangeness of the wide empty ocean around her. She could not see anyone around, no one on the ship, not the woman holding her - was it her mother? - nor the man nearby. She remembered coming from a place where there were people everywhere all the time, and then she was in that place, still in her mother’s arms, still hearing her mother’s song. It was a city, even larger than Philadelphia, and there were so many people in the street where they walked that they had to pass through each other.

As suddenly as it had started, the vision ended, and she was left with the strange image of people passing through each other fresh in her mind. She tried to sit up, still puzzling over what she had seen, and she realized that there were two different types of people. Though she had not been able to tell the difference as her younger self, her older - awake - self noticed that the light bounced off some of them and passed through others. The real people never passed through each other, only through the transparent ones. 

Unlike a dream, the vision’s details became clearer, as if they were memories returning. She could see now that the real people never cast a glance her way, while the transparent ones all noticed her and gave her a smile or a solemn nod. She could see that her dress was yellow, and her mother’s dress was green. She remembered feeling eager when the transparent people spoke to her, and feeling her mother holding her tighter and shifting her in her arms to try to keep her from talking to them.

She drifted back into the present, and silently watched the man and woman, recognizing that they were just like the transparent people in her memory. They seemed friendly, at least nicer than the horrible thing that had been on the soldier’s chest, so Rey asked, “Pardon me, Sir. M’lady. May I ask who you are?”

The woman answered, “Do you mean who we are, my dear? Or what?”

“I suppose what, Madam, if that isn’t an impertinent question.”

The woman smiled, “It is quite pertinent, as a matter of fact. We are ghosts. Ben’s guardians, to be specific. As they are yours.” She nodded to a point just beyond Rey’s shoulder, and Rey froze, suddenly very frightened. She was not afraid of the ghosts who seemed to care for the man they called Ben, but the idea that more of the creatures might be nearby terrified her for some reason. She could not tell if she was more afraid of seeing them or of not seeing them, but she willed herself to turn and look.

There were two women behind her, transparent like the others. One wore a familiar green dress, and Rey knew she was her mother, though she had never been able to remember her mother’s face before. The other woman was Rey’s height, with brown hair like hers, but stern and beautiful. She held herself with a strength that made Rey think of soldiers and wore a silvery tunic and trousers. Neither woman spoke, but the silvery ghost nodded in acknowledgement, and her mother’s ghost smiled through tears.

Rey turned back to Ben’s guardians, unable to think of how to begin speaking with either of the figures behind her. “Where did they come from?” 

Her mother answered instead, with a sweet voice that Rey knew from her dreams, “We never left, my love. We were just waiting until we were needed.”

Rey felt her heart pound with a sudden burst of anger, and her voice shook as she demanded, “Waiting for me to need you? I was alone in the woods for years! I needed you every day!” Tears spilled out of her eyes and her voice broke on the last words.

“Oh, no, Rey! You have never been alone! But it was safer for you not to see us. Nothing we could do would have kept you safe if other people here had known you were a ghost seeker.”

She had heard that phrase before; it seemed like days ago, but it was what the horrible ghost said she was looking for.

The silver ghost added, “You have seen the Darkness at work with your own eyes now, Rey. Regular soldiers cannot hope to defeat an army led by Kylo Ren without a ghost seeker of their own.”

Rey felt as if she had woken up in the middle of a fairy tale, unsure how to make sense of what she was seeing and hearing. “I am sorry, but I don’t even know what that is! Are you saying I am a ghost seeker? And I am supposed to do battle with that?” Rey threw her arm out to wave her hand at the hulking man lying unmoving across the fire. “Is that Kylo Ren?”

The woman at his head looked to the silvery ghost and said, “She knows so little, still, Rosamund. Give her time to remember, and perhaps when she finds Luke...”

“He wakes,” announced the male ghost.

Rey watched the black-clad soldier’s face as he opened his eyes and came to his senses. Traces of oily soot still marked his pale skin, but that did not prevent her from reading half a dozen different expressions as they moved across his transparent features. Finally, he tried to sit up, wincing and groaning, and Rey instinctively reached to place a hand on his chest to keep him still. He laid back down, but grabbed her wrist before she could pull away.

“What have you done to me, rebel scum?”

\------------------

As Kylo roused from sleep, he felt the brightness and warmth of the sun on his face for a long moment before he heard the voice speaking. Without being sure where he was, he instinctively moved to leap upright, but pain shot up his side, and a hand pushed down on his chest. It was not a good sign that such a slender hand could succeed in pushing him down, and he realized he had been weakened somehow. He grabbed the wrist above the hand and groaned, remembering the girl and his wound. 

“What have you done to me, rebel scum?”

“I wish I could claim credit for that hole in your side, but it was probably one of the dead men you lured into the swamp,” the girl snarled. “The only other thing that’s been  _ done to you _ is that bandage. Well, there are some herbs in there, but I’m afraid I couldn’t find anything harsher than plantain, thyme, and willow bark.” 

Hearing her words, he focused on the area where the pain originated and noticed the welcome pressure of the bandages. He couldn’t think of a reason why she would have helped him, let alone why she would still be there, and he wondered if there was something else that he was not remembering. The pain was making it hard to think, so he decided to take a more expedient approach and asked, “Why?”

He thought he heard her mutter,  “That’s a very good question.” 

Her low voice reminded him of his warrior calling out to him, and he remembered what brought him out of the marsh and up onto this ridge. This girl was connected to his warrior somehow, and he needed to know how. He realized with frustration that he was in no position to force information out of her, and he could hardly string two thoughts together with the pain throbbing through his body, so subtle interrogation was probably beyond him, too. His attempt to come up with a strategy was interrupted when she added, more clearly, “Maybe the ghosts made me do it.”

There was an odd twist to her words that he could not understand, and he turned to her, trying to learn more from her expression. He didn’t think she was asking for his opinion, but he answered, “Ghosts can’t make you do anything you don’t already want to.” To himself he added, “Why don’t you know that?” 

And then the answer came to him and he said, “Ah, you are still untaught. You need a teacher.”

“Is the horrible ghost your teacher? The one you were talking to?”

He froze, confused again. Then he remembered a dream of Snoke coming to him, telling him about her. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Snoke had said she was searching for the ghost seeker, Luke Skywalker, and that she was strong herself. No one else had ever been able to see Snoke before, so perhaps she had the potential Snoke claimed. 

“They called you Kylo Ren and Ben. Which one is your real name?” 

He felt a flush of anger and let it come out in his voice when he responded, “Who called me Ben?”

“Your ghost right there,” she pointed to a spot just beyond his head. “But Rosamund called you Kylo Ren.” She gestured over her left shoulder.

“Right, well, Rosamund is right, and the other one is wrong. May I have some water?”

The girl looked stricken and apologized while she jumped up to bring the waterskin to him.

He was not sure why he thought it was important to tell her more, but he added, “You know, even ghost seekers can’t see a ghost that wants to stay hidden. As far as I know right now, there’s no one behind you but the horses.”

“Really? You can’t even see your own ghosts?”

“I have no ghosts of my own,” he brushed her off. “But tell me what your Rosamund looks like.”

The girl turned to her left and looked behind her. “She is dressed in a tunic and long pants like a man, and I suppose she looks a little like me, but beautiful. Her tunic is silver, I think - somehow she shines like an angel.”

She turned to her right, “I think the other one here is my mother. They say they’ve been with me all along, but I never saw them before today. Your ghost spoke to me, and then…”

“I tell you, I have no ghosts!” he nearly shouted in frustration. He wondered why her insistence irritated him so much.

“I beg your pardon. They seem to know you very well, though I guess they think you are someone else named Ben…Can ghosts be wrong about something like that?”

He thought it must be a trick, though it would be difficult for someone who did not know his history to understand how much this lie would disturb him. He needed more information. Luckily the guileless creature across from him did not seem to be inclined to withhold any.

“Describe them.”

“There are two, a man and woman. The man looks like you, I suppose, all in black. The woman is more beautiful than anyone I have ever seen, and she looks at you like she wishes you could…” her voice trailed off.

“Wishes I could what?”

“Like she cares for you.”

He could see their faces in his memory, the kind ghosts from his dreams. He reminded himself that they had never really existed, that they had been a product of his childish imagination, and quickly answered, “I don’t know who they are. I have no ghosts, because those of us who walk on the side of Darkness never do. Your guardians mark you for a child of the Light,” he spat out the word, biting down on the final consonant as if to hurt it.

Rey looked at the spot behind him and asked, “Why won’t he see you?”

He watched her face as she listened, seeing the crease between her eyebrows gradually soften, as if something that had been bothering her was resolved. He didn’t think she was a good enough actress to be working to deceive him. He looked at her wide hazel eyes, her rough disguise, remembered the callouses on her hands, and thought that she was too unpolished to be a spy.

As she carried out her one-sided conversation, he looked behind her to where the horses were companionably ripping up mouthfuls of grass. Silencer was less restive than he tended to be around other horses. The smaller pinto beside him was beautifully formed, with a distinctive head shape and deep chest that reminded him of something. He let the image in front of him go out of focus, and imagined a silvery blue roan coat instead of the pinto, and he realized that he was looking at an exact replica of Leia Organa’s favorite horse Rob Roy. On a hunch, he gave Han Solo’s trademark whistle and watched the pinto’s ears perk up, while Silencer ignored him.

He saw the girl look at him strangely, but was thinking too hard to pay attention to anything she might have said then. Several facts came together to form a new picture in his mind. This girl was looking for Luke Skywalker, but she had not known what a ghost seeker was, or that she was one herself. So she was not looking for a teacher. She was riding a horse that had spent time in the Solo stables and was likely descended from Leia Organa’s favorite horse. 

There was no doubt that that woman had sent her. There was also no doubt that she was lying about his ghosts and where she’d learned his name. Even her unexpected kindness to him took on a sinister cast, as he realized that she had seized an unexpected opportunity to pour poison in his ear.

He was shaking with rage, desperate to lash out, when Snoke’s spiky whisper urged him to be still. “Let the girl go. Let her find the ghost seeker for us, and bring him out of hiding. He is no match for you now. And your mother, she will bring your mother to us, too.”

Ren was not convinced that it was the safest plan, but he also realized that capturing her now, given how weak he was, would mean leaving her to the mercy of his Knights. He thought of his dream of the night before, of his inability to control the Knights, and decided to take Snoke’s advice.

So he curtly told her, “My companions will be coming for me shortly. If you do not wish to meet them, I suggest you leave now.”

“How will you ride? You can hardly lift your head!”

“Dark siders are stronger than you can possibly understand, and the Crown has actual doctors in its service,” he spat out. “I don’t need help from a hedge witch.”

She rose without speaking, packing her things with an extra measure of violence that suggested his barb had hit home. After a minute, he felt a shadow fall over his face and opened his eyes to see her standing over him. 

“What more do you want, girl?”

“You are on my bed, and I need it.”   


He sighed, “Blast. I’m afraid you’ll have to come get it.”

She knelt beside him and pulled him onto his uninjured side with unexpectedly strong hands. He felt her lean over his body to pull the bedroll out from behind him, and then his body jolted as she tugged it out from under him. His eyes flew open in shock and pain, and she froze, looking at his face with an apology on her lips. He brought his hand up between them and seized her by the throat. 

His long fingers dug into her throat, holding her so close to his face she felt his hot breath on her own lips as he growled, “The next time you are this close to me, girl, I will destroy you.” He pushed her away and dropped his head back to the ground, eyes shut and jaws clenched.

Once again, Rey fled. 


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author, grateful that you've read this far, nonetheless drops her pen after leaving you with a final, flickering image.

Rey rode off down the ridge and back toward the road leading west. Over the next several days, she learned more about what it meant to be a ghost seeker. She caught glimpses of ghosts everywhere, even in the loneliest parts of the trail through the mountains. 

Her own ghosts and those roaming free helped her find the Schauer farm tucked in a bend of the Susquehanna River. Herr Schauer was away fighting like his brother-in-law, but Frau Schauer and her children told her every story they knew about the hermit who arrived many years before, walked up into the mountains alone, and hadn’t been heard from since. Rey walked Bonny Boy up the last steep slope to the ghost seeker’s rough-hewn house no more than a week after she first learned that she was a ghost seeker herself.

\----------------

The next time she saw Kylo Ren, it was late September. She arrived home a few days after Howe’s forces landed at Head of Elk, and had hardly slept in the following weeks as they prepared for the expected siege of Philadelphia. In the end, their worst fears of marauding forces had not been realized. The British wanted to preserve the civilized life they found in the colonial capital so they could enjoy it themselves while they headquartered there over the winter.

Like everyone else, Loyalist and Patriot alike, Rey found herself unable to stop watching the victorious British and Hessian soldiers troop through the City. They were a spectacle in themselves, but they were not the only reason she had a difficult time keeping her eyes on the watch she was mending as she sat by a window at the front of Mrs. Solo’s house.

She was looking out that window when a clot of black marred the vibrant flow of red and green coats. Two riders on matched black thoroughbreds rose above all the others. Rey was certain she had never seen the nearer man before. He was dressed in pristine black and wore a powdered wig, but the milk-pale skin beneath it suggested his own hair was red. Rey spared him only a glance, because the other man drew her eyes like a magnet.

She had thought about this man’s face every day for two months, and he appeared in her dreams almost as often. Sometimes she thought of him with fear, sometimes pity, but in her dreams there was always longing. Sometimes it was physical, the memory of his weight pressing her down or the heat of his skin. More often she found herself wondering what he thought when he learned something she had just learned, or trying to decide what he would think of a ghost that had just appeared to her. She felt alone among her friends now, and wondered if that was one of the things that troubled the man who found her in the woods.

As he passed, he turned his familiar face towards the house and looked directly at her, an echo of how he walked straight up to her hiding place that night. He doffed his hat to her, the twisted smile he wore making a mockery of his courtesy, and rode on. As she watched him go, she caught the faintest hint of a figure outlined in dirty gold clinging to the saddle behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so grateful to every one of you whose eyes pass over these words, whether or not you've left your mark somewhere above. But let me reiterate my deep gratitude and affection for [PoliticalMamaDuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/pseuds/politicalmamaduck) for her moodboard and official RFFA expert-level editing, [QueenofCarrotFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers) and [MissCoppelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCoppelia/pseuds/MissCoppelia) for reading early outlines and egging me on, the authors of [Statera Trium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15366297/chapters/35656308) and [Cephalopods & Caffeine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15970064/chapters/37249886) for letting me step into their universe, and always and forever (no amount of thanks will ever repay her), [Flypaper_Brain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flypaper_brain/pseuds/flypaper_brain), who makes every minute of writing pain an exercise in joy.
> 
> Do you wonder what happens next? Let me know in the comments...I have ideas but could use a bit of motivation!


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